OrphanWilde comments on A Challenge: Maps We Take For Granted - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Sable 29 May 2015 03:50AM

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Comment author: OrphanWilde 01 June 2015 08:33:26PM * 2 points [-]

Start a cannery for longer-term food storage.
Start work on long-term sanitation/sewage solutions (even if it's a stone or lead-lined wooden trough fed from an aqueduct washing sewage into an old rock quarry that people dump their chamberpots into, it's still an improvement)
Spread mathematics knowledge, especially statistics, which have a huge range of potential purposes
Movable-type printing press for easy dissemination of information (have an early emphasis on new and useful ideas and inventions)
Chalkboards; reusable writing surfaces which require no unusual supplies, and are extraordinarily useful, and invented surprisingly late
Lightning rods; cheap, yet valuable.
Assembly lines
Prepaid postage for mail
Rocking chairs. Why? Why not.
Swamp coolers (fan over water). Prohibitively expensive with the lower classes (no electricity, so fans have to be manually powered), but will curry lots of favor with the upper classes.
Public transit, a la the omnibus.
Electroplating - cheap(er) ornamentation requiring only primitive electrical components
Canal construction. Historically a grossly underutilized method of mass transportation (with many additional benefits, such as irrigation potential)
Establish rewards (land, money, titles) for major innovations/innovators

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 02 June 2015 01:05:41AM 1 point [-]

Start work on long-term sanitation/sewage solutions

The Romans had sanitation. It collapsed when the Empire fell.